Good word that. Ponder I mean. It's a bit like the cerebral equivalent of pottering. If you potter you will probably be doing very little but anything you do will be physical. With pondering it's a mental process.
It can also be a lonely process as Wordsworth pointed out in his most famous poem.
I pondered lonely as a cloud.
The thing that concerns me with writing is "do I have a style and is there any originality in what I do?"
Sometimes I read a book and it makes me feel totally inadequate from a writing point of view. I recently visited my local library and they had a section of new paperbacks. A couple caught my attention. I tend to read and write non fiction. Now here I must pause while you say "but most of what you write is made up."
Well actually that's not true. Everything I write is based on my experience and is 100 per cent true. Okay okay maybe there is a little embellishment occasionally but only very occasionally (honest).
So I took out two quite large tomes and I'm currently reading them side by side. Their style is very different. Firstly there's Broken Greek which is an autobiography by Pete Paphides which is about his growing up in Birmingham and his love of music. The second is Next to Nature by Ronald Blythe who died recently at the age of 100. It's written in an academic kind of style that I could never emulate or get anywhere near for that matter. The two books are very different in style but reading them makes me feel really inadequate as a writer.
So I had a long ponder about what writing style I do have. Well I'm much more Bill Bryson than Ronald Blythe.
Blythe's writing about nature and the church is extremely learned and at times quite difficult to read but very rewarding if you stay with it. But at times he does seem to assume that you know about the area he is writing about which in this case is the landscape around his home on the Suffolk/Essex border - Constable country.
So I pondered on my style of writing and the closest I could come was the word conversationalistic. That's a very long word (19 letters if you bother to count them). If I have a style in my writing it involves writing as I would talk - in other words having a conversation with my readers and making it a two way thing. I hope that this is almost unique.
Now I must break off here to chastise myself as there are no degrees of uniqueness. Something is either unique or isn't. It can't be totally unique or almost unique or completely unique. So my writing cannot be unique because it's not a style I have invented.
But, at the risk of sounding cocky, it's a style I'm pretty pleased with. I like to think that as you read my blogs I'm having a conversation with each and every one of you and you are talking back to me.
As I write I'm imagining you reading the pieces and imagining what your reaction is. Does a blog make you happy, does it amuse you, does it make you angry? These are just some of the emotions that I might prompt and I love pondering in asides about just how you are reacting. That's why I often add bits like "hold on I hear you say." That's my way of trying to second guess how you are responding.
And the great thing is I feel I have around 650 friends through writing these blogs which now number over 1200. I really do appreciate all the lovely comments.
Some of you I will never meet because the distance between us is too vast. Others live very close and I am often approached by people who say how much they love my blogs. That gives me a very warm and fuzzy feel. As I write them I'm always aware that in a few hour's time people will be reading them.
I am taken aback when people say lovely things like "reading your blog gives me a great start to the day" and 'reading the blog is the first thing I do after I've made a cup of tea."
I never take these comments for granted and I never forget the responsibility I have and have picked up by writing these blogs.
I guess I just wanted to say a massive thank you for indulging my passion and I will write more about this at a later date. Bless you all.
One last thought on the Broken Greek book. The author's first name isn't Pete or anything like it. One day at school he decided he wanted to Anglicise his first name and so he became Pete.
My real first name is Peter or Pete if you prefer. I'm happy with either. I sometimes think dropping the r is mor friendly. I also like my middle name and often wonder if I shouldn't have adopted it.
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Had to laugh yesterday when the BBC went to a reporter standing outside the Prime Minister's country residence Checkers which is in Buckinghamshire. Said reporter excitedly told us that the meeting between President Zelensky and Prime Minister Sunak had been shrouded in secrecy. That's despite Zelensky announcing the meeting to the world on Twitter.
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Now to the continuation of the travelogue.
A few days ago I mentioned seeing the words Great Yarmouth on the side of a bus in Lisbon and how the other threequarters had laughed and thought me in cloud cuckoo land.
Then on our last night in Lisbon, she grabbed my arm and pointed at a bus and there it was - the immortal words Great Yarmouth. I hadn't made it up.
So we did research on the internet and what we found was not what we expected.
Great Yarmouth is a film about emigrant Portuguese people living in Great Yarmouth and the problems they have been facing during lockdown and the economic downturn.
Apparently it's a comment on the general malaise in the UK at the moment and the way Portuguese people are allegedly being badly treated in Norfolk. The film blurb states that it has taken a Portuguese director to highlight the plight of Portuguese people living overseas who are known locally as Pork and Cheese.
It's a film I'm now keen on tracking down to view. I'm not sure it will be on general release in the UK. Thinking back something tells me that 5 per cent of people living in Great Yarmouth are Portuguese or is that Greek? I get slightly confused. It may be that 5 percent of people living in Thetford are Portuguese as that figure springs to mind as well.
I will be interested to find out how so many came to settle in the UK.
Today was spent in Porto and I prefer it greatly to Lisbon. I often wonder when visiting places whether your thoughts dominate the actuality. I guess I had decided I was going to like Porto and indeed I did. It's walkable, you don't have to keep getting buses and metros. Our apartment is in a much nicer area and we found it to be only 10 minutes walk to the historic centre and 20 to the river.
Mind you the place was heaving with tourists as opposed to Global Travellers. We seem to have been away from home for months rather than 18 days.
One worry for us is rail strikes. Yes it's not just England that has them. They are here in Portugal as well and on Tuesday we need to get back to Spain and then onto France.
Just one aside. Yesterday in a local supermarket I managed to get a bottle of beer for the equivalent of 60p. It was Super Bock. Beer in all the restaurants/ cafes seems to be Super Bock. Apparently this has won 30 gold medals in international competitions and is a champion beer in Portugal which may be due to a lack of competition as much as to anything else. It is a light lager, however, and very drinkable.
We had lunch in a local bar but when we went to pay they only accepted cash. In a souvenir shop it was the same which seems rather strange.
Another strange thing was the underpants we bought. They said something about covering a big banana which was rather a risque thing for the other threequarters but I needed some and I couldn't find those offering to cover a shrivelled walnut. It was the other threequarters suggestion anyway but I asked her to define the phrase big banana and she declined.
Another strange thing was lunch. We ordered a sandwich founded in Porto by the name of a Francesinha. Describing this is going to take some doing. It was technically a sandwich filled with beef and ham and sausage and topped with melted cheese and an egg. The whole thing was swimming in a lake of tomato sauce and then there were fries on the side. Apparently this delicacy was brought to Porto by an immigrant who wanted to produce something like the French Croque Monsieur. He obviously failed as it's nothing like the French dish. It was very filling though. We ordered one to share and when it came thought we had two but was assured we didn't. At the end of it we were both well and truly stuffed.
Another strange thing was a crazy shop and this is even more difficult to explain. It was garish and highly colourful - like a Hollywood store on speed. It sold sardines and shrimps in highly colourful tins with various years and information about those years on them. They were stacked from floor to ceiling. The shop was very busy. Nobody was buying but they were all taking photos.
Another strange thing was the shop next door which had similar decor and was selling pastries and wine. There's an awful lot of pastries in Portugal and they are very cheap.
We did the touristy things like the one hour river trip that went under five bridges or was it six? And the cable car ride followed by a walk across a very high bridge. We even went into a shop where they were giving away samples of Port. Whoever knew that Port came from PORTugal and PORTo in particular?
And apart from an evening meal, that was our day in Porto. It is one of the nicest places I have visited and if Lisbon was a bit of a let down, Porto lived up to all expectations.
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Oh before you scream with frustration my middle name is Owen. One day I will tell you why and I don't think it has anything to do with Wales or the Welsh. I will leave it up to those who know me to decide whether I'm a Peter or a Pete or an Owen. Votes please.